Analysis of Polypropylene Products Combining Pyrolysis GC/EI and GC/PI

Introduction

Gas chromatography-quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-QMS) is widely used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of volatile compounds. Qualitative analysis by GC-QMS is generally performed by searching the library database (DB) using electron ionization (EI) data. However, if qualitative analysis is performed using only the similarity with the library spectrum as an index, several significant candidates may be obtained depending on the compound which in turn could lead to the selection of an incorrect candidate. In these situations, molecular ion confirmation by using soft ionization (SI) methods such as photoionization (PI) can be effective for helping with proper identification.